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You looked at Break and you saw muscle, you saw the beard, you saw the ice blue eyes. No one immediately thought upon seeing him that he was wise, but he was. He'd led a rough life, living on the streets, eking out a living with his fists, dealing with all kinds of scumbags. The streets aged men and women beyond their years.
"Alright," I said, un-clenching my fists and releasing a breath that I had been holding so long that the fresh air I pulled in burned my lungs.
"There's a gas station with an outside entrance to the bathroom down the block. Go and clean up. I'll grab you a shirt and meet you there."
So that was what we did.
Then we made our way back to my girl.
The walk wasn't long, but it was long enough to give a man time to think.
Like think about the fact that Elsie was just held at gunpoint by her sister who had somehow managed to overthrow Enzo and get hold of the Third Street loyalty. And, well, the bitch was cooking meth. Meth. Christ. On top of that, she had a busted face, raw arms and hands, and damage to her torso: busted ribs or maybe just some nasty bruising. It also didn't escape me that Enzo had been the one to diffuse things, saving Elsie, trying to get her off the ground. That meant something. Then him telling the Third Street guys that they were dead to him, yeah, that meant something too. And that 'something' needed some clarification as soon as fucking possible.
But first, Elsie.
I had barely come to a stop in front of her before her forehead landed in my chest and a wrecked-sounding sob tore from her, making a stabbing feeling sear through my gut. I let all the other shit fall away and held her until she worked through the first round of grief. First. I had watched my mom, sisters, and aunts enough in my life to know that, with women, their sadness came on them in waves. Days, weeks, months, years. Another wave could always come crashing. I had no doubt that Elsie was going to have more to go through in her near future.
When I finally got her into the car and turned it over, the other thoughts came flooding back. I knew I needed to stay in the moment and give Elsie whatever she needed, but I couldn't fight the other things from crowding out everything else.
I got her shuffled into a room and sat in the chair beside the bed, waiting for the doctor. She went for an x-ray of her ribs which weren't broken, just a little bruised. Her face would heal in its own time and I made a mental note to pick up more of the tattoo cover-up cream. Her hands and arms took the longest, a nurse painstakingly pulling clumps of dirt and gravel out of the dozens of blood-crusted cuts. Then she had medicine smeared on and her hands and arms wrapped up in gauze up to her elbows. She got a script for pain meds and instructions on treating her wounds at home. All said and done, she had gotten off relatively easy. But if you tried to tell that to the seemingly bottomless pit of rage inside me, nah. All I could see was her gorgeous face with a nasty bruise, a cut on her perfect lips, gauze all up and down her arms. All I could see was that some mother fucker put his hands on what was mine.
It didn't matter that D would likely be eating through a tube for the next year. It didn't matter that his face would never look the same again.
It wasn't enough.
But then again, even if he had paid with his life, it never would have felt like enough.
Because who I was really pissed at was myself. That shouldn't have been able to happen on my watch. My people did not get busted up. It didn't matter that I was out of the gang and had been for a long time, you didn't fuck with what was mine and that was how it was. But I had been too fucking wrapped up in spending time with her, getting to know her mind and her body that I hadn't done the most basic things to keep her safe. Like give her my God damn cell phone number. Instead of calling or texting me, she'd needed to drop a fucking pin and hope to hell that Barrett was paying attention. I hadn't given her mace or a self-defense key chain or taser like I had given my mom and sisters. I hadn't done shit.
She was sitting on a hospital bed all bruised and battered with tear-stained cheeks and sad eyes because I dropped the ball. I had to live with that. And when she got some sleep, some food, some time to think things through, she would start to see that I didn't protect her. Then she would look at me differently. And I would have to learn to live with that too.
